The Auburndale Watch Company / First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch

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William Bentley Fowle (fig. 10), new partner with Hopkins and Colt in the watch, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on July 27, 1826. His father, William B. Fowle, Senior, a well-known Boston teacher and 58 educator, had variously been a bookseller and conductor of a “Female Monitorial School.”[18] The junior William B. Fowle we have first located as a ticket master with the Boston and Worcester Railroad in 1848,[19] and he retained this listing in the directory through 1851. Starting in 1852 and continuing through 1862, with no indication of employer or occupation, he had an office at 9 Merchants Exchange. In 1860 and 1862 he was a member of the Boston Common Council, and was president of that body in 1865. In 1862, after the second battle of Bull Run, he raised an infantry company for the 43rd Massachusetts Volunteers and was mustered in, September 24, 1862, with the rank of captain. From December 7, 1862, to March 4, 1863, he was commandant of the military post at Beaufort, North Carolina. He then reported to his regiment. On June 24, 1863, he was left sick at New Bern, North Carolina, by his company bound for Fortress Monroe. On July 21 he rejoined his company at Boston, Massachusetts, in time to be mustered out on July 30 at the expiration of his nine months’ enlistment.[20]

Figure 11.—The Two Lever Escapements Used in the Auburndale Rotary. Note, in addition to the escapement, the absence of banking pins and the metal balance jewel in the escapement at the left, which is from watch No. 176. (Both watches in the author’s collection.)

In the 1864 Boston directory we find him listed as treasurer of the Bear Valley Coal Co., and the North Mountain Coal Co., with an office at 38 City Exchange. This association with the coal business continued with changes unimportant to our story through the directories until 1877, in which year the name is dropped from the Boston directory, not to reappear until the directory of 1880, where he is listed at “Herald Building, watches and timers.” This was apparently the sales office. The Newton directory of 1877 drops its previous listing of coal after Mr. Fowle’s name and first mentions the Auburndale Watch Co.[21] In 1866 Mr. Fowle established his home, Tanglewood, in Auburndale, a village in Newton not far from his boyhood home at West Newton and on the bank of the Charles River about two miles upstream from the Waltham Watch Co. He served the town of Newton as selectman from 1869 through 1871, was an alderman in 1877, and mayor in 1878 and 1879.[22]

Figure 12.—A 24-Hour Dial for the rotary watch.
(In the author’s collection.)

William Atherton Wales of New York is credited with introducing Mr. Fowle to the Hopkins watch. No clue has come to light on what connection there was between Hopkins and Wales, who had been a partner in the large watch-importing house of Giles, Wales and Co., in New York and later a large stockholder in the United States Watch Co. of Marion, New Jersey, which had only ceased operation in 1874. A patent[23] had been issued to Fayette S. Giles of New York, the leading figure in the United States Watch Co., for an improvement in stem-winding watches. This had presumably been available to his company. In this winding mechanism a crown pinion driven by a clutch on the stem engages with a large ring gear, having 110 internal teeth, which in turn drives a gear on the barrel arbor. The author has seen no watch, except the patent model,[24] containing this device, but the pillar plate of many of the United States Watch Co. movements were cut out, apparently to receive this ring gear.

The expense of cutting so many internal teeth in steel seems reason enough to explain why this patent did not become the basis for all their stem-wound models. Steel is far more difficult to cut than brass, resulting in a much greater consumption of time and cutters, both of which represent money to the manufacturer. In the patent model these ring-gear teeth have been cut by a milling cutter which did not pass 59 through the ring and across the face of the teeth. This produced a gear somewhat resembling an internal bevel gear, one which could have only the merest contact with its mating pinion. To make a durable gear for this application it would be necessary to pass the cutter through the ring in line with the gear axis. This would require a special or, at least, radically modified gear-cutting machine with a cutter arbor shorter than the inside diameter of the gear. Into this short space the spindle bearings and means of driving the spindle would have to be crowded, along with the cutter. Hopkins faced a problem similar to this in cutting the ring gear for his watch, except that the brass gear needed for the rotary watch could be cut far more easily and quickly. This may be the link which brought Wales and the defunct United States Watch Co. into the Auburndale picture. Another plausible link between Fowle and Wales involves a patent[25] Wales received for a pulley. This, the now familiar device of interlocking conical sections so commonly used in variable speed V-belt drives, was assigned to G. E. Lincoln of Boston, Massachusetts. George E. Lincoln was treasurer of the Mammoth Vein Consolidated Coal Co. at Boston in 1865, with an office adjoining that of Fowle. In addition he boarded for many years at Auburndale,[26] and he apparently owned the buildings about to be converted into a watch factory. Thus we see that Lincoln may very well have been the one who brought Fowle and Wales together.

Figure 13.—The Auburndale Timer with top plate, balance, and control mechanism removed to show the train. The conventional barrel has 66 teeth that drive a pinion on the so-called 10-minute staff. This staff carries on the dial end the pointer, which revolves in 10 minutes, as indicated on the dial. Also on this staff is an unspoked wheel of 80 driving the center, or minute, staff through a pinion of 8. In addition to the sweep hand (or hands in the case of the split model) indicating seconds up to a duration of one minute, there is a wheel of 80 driving a pinion of 8 on an intermediate staff. A wheel of 60 on this staff drives a pinion of 10 on the escape-wheel staff. A pointer on this last staff also carries the hand that indicates fractions of a second. (In the author’s collection.)

William B. Fowle’s cash book shows, on July 14, 1876, payment to Geo. E. Lincoln “For large building used $200” and “For small building used $30.” On July 21 is an entry “Milo Lucas bal. of Building Contract $1605.25.” These with an entry on the preceding June 30, “Milo Lucas on a/c Contract for Building” seem, with a July 25 entry “W. E. C. Fowler, Painting Factory $64.91,” to cover the expense for the bare factory. The buildings, two stories high and measuring 40 x 20 and 32 x 20 feet, respectively, were located on the Weston bank of the Charles River, opposite Fowle’s home, from which they could be reached by a private ferry. This pleasant bucolic location was not far upstream from that originally sought by the Boston Watch Co. when that firm was looking for a spot to move to from Roxbury in 1854. The situation of the factory was described as a wild and secluded glen.[27]

Another account[28] says:

The well appointed little steamer White Swan, owned and commanded by a Captain Gibbs, veteran of the last war, now plies regularly between Waltham and Auburndale Bridge, carrying picnic parties, etc.... Along the banks of the river are located the summer residences of Messrs. Cutter and Merrill, the elegant residence of R. M. Pulsifer, Mayor of Newton, the splendid mansion of Ex-Mayor Fowle, the Benyon mansion and others.... At sunset the river is alive with canoes, row-boats, shells and sailboats filled with ladies and gentlemen adding, with the delightful music, greatly to the natural charm of the scenery.

Figure 14.—Escape Wheel and Pallets of an Auburndale timer. With four pins in the escape wheel, this particular one beats eighths of a second. (In author’s collection.)

This idyllic pastoral setting surely must have been a joy to all connected with the little watch factory. It seems to typify the atmosphere of wealth and leisure into which the infant industry was brought without adequate study of the problems it would be called upon to surmount.

The Auburndale machinery came from the United States Watch Co. factory at Marion, New Jersey, which, as we have seen, was closed in 1874. William A. Wales, who was associated with Fowle in the Auburndale “adventure,” had been secretary, treasurer, and director of this company. Most of the machinery came from George E. Hart and Co., of Newark, which had taken over much of the Company’s equipment, eventually selling it to other factories. Warren E. Ray, a neighbor of Mr. Fowle’s, commenced as manager of the factory in July 1876, and died suddenly of heart disease about October 1 of that year. He was soon succeeded by Mr. James H. Gerry, who had gone from Waltham to Newark in 1863 to superintend the building of the original machines for the United States factory.

The employees were chiefly drawn from other factories, principally the neighboring American Watch Co. at Waltham, and the defunct United States Watch Co., while some who needed no specific watchmaking skills perhaps never had worked in a watch factory before. Names, not already mentioned, that have been preserved are: George H. Bourne, L. C. Brown, Abraham Craig, Frederick H. Eaves, Henry B. Fowle, Benjamin F. Gerry, William H. Guest, Jose Guinan, Sadie Hewes, Isaac Kilduff (the watchman), Justin Hinds, E. Moebus, James O’Connell (the stationary engineer), Edwin H. Perry, Frank N. Robbins, John Rose, Thomas W. Shephard, William H. A. Simmons, Alfred Simpson, Thomas Steele, Oscar L. Strout, and George Wood. These, compiled from several sources,[29] represent only a few of the men who contributed their knowledge and skill to the enterprise; they are listed in alphabetical order because it has been found impossible to arrange them accurately according to position, magnitude of contribution, or length of service.

Of the five Hopkins patents[30] the first and the last are the ones covering the essential elements used in the Auburndale product. The two patents assigned in half to William D. Colt apparently were never used, nor does the device shown in figure6 seem to have been used, although these unused patents are listed on the Auburndale movements. Now that the watch was in the hands of men accustomed to making watches, some modifications dictated by their experience and 61 by considerations of expediency in manufacture were made. The movement that issued was 18 size, rather thick, cased at the factory in a nickel case made by the Thiery Watch Case Co. of Boston, Massachusetts. In the winding and setting mechanisms, some changes in details were made with respect to those shown in figure7. The dial is mounted by means of a rim which snaps over the edge of the movement as on a high-grade Swiss watch of the same era. The usual dial feet, if used, would have interfered with the rotation of the movement. For the same reason, of course, there is no dial indicating seconds.

Figure 15.—Verge and Lever for an Auburndale timer. The one on the left beats eighths of a second; that on the right beats quarters. (In author’s collection.)

Five jewels are found in most instances, two cap jewels and two hole jewels for the balance staff and a jeweled impulse pin. One of the faults of the movement is that the cap and hole jewels on the balance are not separable for cleaning. After the jewels were inserted part of the setting was spun down over them, making the assembly permanent. A few movements with only one jewel are known, the cap and hole jewels being metal “jewels” likewise set under a spun-over rim. Whether or not the impulse jewel found in these last-mentioned movements is original or a later intrusion remains undetermined. It is easy to conceive that the factory would see no more necessity for an impulse jewel than for other jewels.

The lever escapement is the only one known to have been used, but two varieties of this are found (see fig. 11). One is a standard club-tooth lever with banking pins, the other, much more interesting because unconventional, has pointed pallets and all the lift on the escape wheel, which has very short stubby teeth, very much like the wheel of a pin-pallet escapement. No banking pins are used, the banking taking place between the pallets and the wheel. An examination of a number of these watches, with serial numbers ranging from 46 to 507,[31] reveals no correlation between the serial number and the style of escapement, from which one may conclude that the pointed pallet escapement was originally used; later four balance jewels were added and the escapement changed to the conventional club-tooth pattern. As complaints came in about the defective running of the watch these changes were apparently substituted at the factory in customers’ watches. The movements with the pointed-pallet escapement seldom show much wear; on the other hand, watch no. 224,[32] which has the conventional escapement and five jewels, is very much worn and must have run for many years.

These watches are stem wound by turning opposite to the usual direction and are set through the winding crown after actuating a setting lever located under the front bezel. The plates, bridges, and ring gear are nickel-plated and highly buffed, making a very showy movement, the only instances of such a finish on watches in the author’s experience. In figure12 is shown a 24-hour dial to fit the movement. Special dial gearing would be required for the hour hand to accompany this dial.

Figure 16.—Dial for ¹/₁₀-Second Model Auburndale timer. (In author’s collection.)

The first of these watches were placed on the market in 1877, priced at $10.00 to the trade. Soon complaints came in that they were defective in operation and many were returned. We have seen from the specimens examined that there seems to have been no established model produced in quantity. The dial and the number of jewels varied, as well as the escapement, suggesting that the owners were groping for a salable variant of the design for which they had tooled the factory. Probably the pointed pallet escapement was used first, it being the less expensive of the two. 62 In addition to the saving effected by not requiring banking pins, the escape wheel was much cheaper to cut, as the teeth were very short and strong (see fig. 11). Since the banking took place between the pallets and the escape wheel, there was no adjustment for the amount of slide; and since the watches were not made to close tolerances, the slide was necessarily excessive and consequently power consuming. The conventional club-tooth escapement was probably substituted as less troublesome, although the banking pins were fixed and could only be adjusted by bending them. The pallets remained solid steel, without adjustable stone inserts.

At this stage of affairs approximately $140,000 had been invested in the venture, the market was already glutted with conventional watches which enjoyed the confidence of retailers, and the Auburndale Rotary had won a bad reputation. The success of any watch depends largely on the confidence the retail dealers have in it. They are looking for a product easy to sell at an attractive profit as well as one that will stay sold and create a satisfied customer. Fowle was of course very much disappointed; before going into the venture he had been advised that he could expect to produce 200 watches per day on an expenditure of $16,000.[33] The watches reached the market at a time, the fall of 1877, almost coincidental with application by D. Azro A. Buck for patents on what was to become the Waterbury rotary. These patents represented a new and economically sound expression of the basic ideas of Hopkins. The Waterbury associates immediately commenced work aimed at getting their watch on the market by June 1878.[34] News of this certainly reached Auburndale where they were not only well aware of the cost of producing their rotary but were also aware of the strict cost and performance studies which Locke and Merritt would apply to any watch before they would invest in it. Knowledge of this very able and well organized rival, coupled with the troubles experienced in manufacturing and selling the Auburndale Rotary, seem to account for the decision to abandon it. It was unfortunate that the timing of events happened just as it did for a little more work on the Auburndale and the tools for making it would probably have placed it on a firm footing in the trade, although obviously it could never compete with what eventually became the low-priced watch, really a scaled-down alarm clock minus the alarm mechanism.

It is said that about one thousand of the “Rotaries” were made. The highest serial number to come to the author’s attention, 507, may indicate that only a part of the watches started were finished.

Accounts agree[35] that the next product of the factory was a “Timer” containing a novel escapement patented on May 28, 1878,[36] by William A. Wales. Early specimens are marked “Pat. Applied For,” but one with the serial number 996[37] bears no reference at all to a patent, presumably because issuance of the patent or patents was imminent. Apparently the timer was in full production before the patent was issued on May 28. Specimens with higher serial numbers are stamped with three patent dates, May 28, 1878,[38] June 24, 1879, and September 30, 1879, as seen in figure13, which also shows the arrangement of the train. In this escapement the escape wheel (fig. 14) carries in the rim any suitable number of steel pins all on the same radius from, and parallel to, the axis of wheel rotation. In all cases the wheel makes one revolution per second. The verge (figs. 14 and 15) is so proportioned that the distance between the points of repose on the entrance and exit pallets will stop the wheel at intervals equal to half the angular distance between the pins.

In other words, with two pins in the escape wheel the escapement will beat quarters of a second, because starting from a point of repose the wheel will be arrested on the other point of repose after turning through 90°. With four pins in the escape wheel and a suitably proportioned verge the escape wheel advances in steps of 45° and beats eighths of a second. The growing trend in this period to standardize the 63 timing of sporting events in intervals of fifths of a second is reflected in still another model having five pins in the escape wheel and beating tenths of a second. By the nature of the verge in this escapement, it will be seen that the number of beats must be twice the number of pins in the escape wheel, leaving no way to secure an odd number of beats per second, hence the ¹/₁₀-second model. This must have been a less desirable form because of the much smaller verge required, plus the problem of accelerating so much mass from a dead stop 600 times per minute.

Figure 17.—A Timer Dial that is probably either experimental or very early. Note that the fractions of a second (quarters) are shown on the outside dial instead of on a separate dial. This dial was converted at the factory for use as the base of a hairspring vibrating stand. A dial different from this but having the same arrangement of circles is known. (In author’s collection.)

Figure 16 illustrates a dial for this ¹/₁₀-second model which the author found in a lot of unused parts left over when the factory closed. The watch had an 18-size ³/₄-plate movement with grained nickel finish. The escapement is special, as we have seen, but the fork, roller, and balance action are conventional. There are five jewels, four to support the balance staff and an impulse jewel. The barrel arbor comes through the top plate with a square, as in a keywind watch, but is fitted with a winding handle, so that a key is unnecessary. This handle appears to be an afterthought, because on the earlier models (those with serial numbers below 1,000), the barrel arbor is short, barely long enough to attach the winding handle; later this arbor was made longer. Patent 204274 issued to Benjamin Wormelle of Brighton, Massachusetts, on May 28, 1878, the same date as Wales’ escapement patent, may have suggested this winding handle. On watches with higher serial numbers, there are two arrows on the handle to show the direction to wind.

The earliest of these timers had a slide on the side of the case to stop the movement by means of a piece of thin spring steel applied roughly tangentially to the smooth rim of the three-arm, solid steel balance wheel. When this action is reversed to start the movement, the spring, in retracting from the wheel rim, starts the wheel swinging. Soon this slide on the case was dispensed with by fitting a curved sheet-metal rack into a groove turned in the edge of the balance cock. Engaging this rack was a pinion with a square hole through which the square stem could slide to set the hands back to zero as it had from the beginning, while turning the stem now would actuate the pinion and rack to start and stop the movement, as the slide in the case had originally done.

Various minor changes, dictated by experience and the need for economy in manufacture, were made in these movements. After about the first thousand the diameter of the balance was reduced from approximately .700 to about .530 inch. This smaller wheel was, of course, much more suitable to vibrate at the faster speeds required on the models beating eighths and tenths of a second. At some time between the manufacture of watches bearing serial numbers 3135 and 3622, the formerly separate winding pawl and spring were combined into one piece that could be entirely made in a punch press. Another economy move was to stamp the name and patents in place of hand engraving. For a long time hand engraving was used, although stamping had been used from the beginning on the earlier rotary watch.

The case was very similar to that used on the rotary. The dial, of white enamel with snap rim fastened by a screw,[39] carried three graduated circles, an outer circle graduated in seconds up to sixty surrounding two smaller subsidiary dials. The top one of these smaller dials recorded minutes elasped up to ten and the lower one recorded fractions of a second. The 64 same dial was used on movements indicating quarters and eighths of seconds, all being graduated in eighths. A dial without provision for indicating the fractions of a second on a separate small dial may be seen in figure 17. This last has been made into a stand for hair spring work and is shown with balance and spring just as it came from the Auburndale factory with balance spring and wheel for a timer still in place.

Figure 18.—Tag Displaying Directions for Use of the Auburndale Timer.
(In author’s collection.)

The sweep second hand and the minute register hand are attached to heart-shaped cams friction driven from their respective staffs. They are reset by a bar pivoted beneath the dial and actuated by the stem through pressure on the crown. An original instruction tag as sent from the factory with these timers is seen in figure18.

Figure19 shows the mechanism of the split-second model as represented in U.S. patent 220195 of September 30, 1879, issued to William A. Wales and assigned to William B. Fowle.[40] A split-second mechanism is used to time the finish of two horses in the same race or any other similar event. In usual watches of this nature the watch will run along indefinitely with the extra or split second hand stopped although this hand will not record more than a difference of one minute from the main sweep hand. This was not true of the Auburndale, as pointed out in the instructions. The reason for this is that motion is conveyed to this hand through a hair spring which would be damaged if allowed to overwind. To prevent this a stop is interposed which will halt the entire watch unless directions are followed. The serrated wheel F, of hardened steel, driving the second sweep hand, is cut on the edge with 120 serrations; stopping of this hand therefore is only to the nearest half second regardless of how minutely the escapement is dividing time. This is rather a serious defect as, if timing a horse race as an example, the time of the fastest horse is taken on this hand which registers a lesser degree of accuracy than the time recorded on the second and less important horse. A general view of one of these watches is seen in figure20.

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